Friday, January 29, 2016

West Less Afraid of a New Munich than of Kremlin Collapse, Shevtsova Says

Paul
Goble

Staunton, January 29 – In 1991, a
cartoon appeared in one Western newspaper showing Mikhail Gorbachev holding a
gun to his head and saying “Do what I demand or your friend gets it.”That explains why the West continued to back
him long after he had ceased to be a force for progress.

Now, Lilia Shevtsova suggests
something similar may be at work in the West’s assessment of what is happening
in Russia as a result of the combination of Western sanctions, the collapse of
oil prices and the ruble, and Vladimir Putin’s own policies (facebook.com/ShevtsovaLilia/posts/1677273219196169?pnref=story).

The Brookings Institution analyst
says that the international community has applied sanctions many times
typically without notable success. But “the sanctions against Russia have
turned out to be embarrassing in terms of their impact” – and less in the
economic realm than in the political one.

First of all, she points out, “the
sanctions have demonstrated Russia’s dependence on developed countries and the
lack of its independence even in carrying out its service role as a raw
materials supplier.” Second, “the failure of the foreign policy of the Kremlin
which has been directed at undermining the unity of the West has become an
obvious failure.”

Despite expectations and the work of
Kremlin lobbyists, “the liberal democracies have demonstrated the ability to
preserve their unity as far as the sanctions regime is concerned.” But third,
there is growing concern that the impact of sanctions on Russia could lead to
its collapse – and that is something the West fears almost as much as the
Kremlin does.

“Since the fall of 2014, the Kremlin
(through Minsk 1 and then Minsk 2) began to search for a path out of the war
with Ukraine and the lifting of sanctions but under the condition that it be
allowed to save face.Today, what is
being discussed are meanings of saving [the Kremlin’s] face: how to present a
defeat as a victory.”

According to Shevtsova, Moscow’s
aggressiveness is “only an attempt to force the West to accept the Kremlin
conditions for making that happen. And apparently, many in the West are ready
for a deal, for the collapse of the Kremlin is more frightening than
accusations of a new ‘Munich.’”

The Moscow analyst doesn’t say, but
her words clearly suggest that the world is at the point of precisely a new
Munich, one in which a second tier power is sacrificed because of the threats
of a larger one and in which that larger one learns a very dangerous lesson:
with the Western countries, aggressive behavior and threats work.

A new Munich does appear very much
at hand, given the continuing statements by Western leaders that they want to
end sanctions if only Moscow will show “good will.”But history suggests that what everyone
should be worrying about is not a Munich itself but instead rather what will
come after it.

Munich-1 was a crime; but it was so
in the very first instance not because Britain and France betrayed their
principles and sacrificed Czechoslovakia. Instead, it was a crime because it
convinced Hitler that he could continue to intimidate and win out without war.
He was proved wrong, and the world was plunged into World War II.

It is thus far more important that
the West worry now less about accusations of a second Munich or the collapse of
Putin’s criminal regime than about the possibility that making a deal with him
for short-term benefits will entail what could easily be an even more tragic
set of long term consequences.